Sarah Callender lives in Seattle with her husband, son and daughter. A crummy house-cleaner and terrible at responding to emails in a timely fashion, Sarah chooses instead to focus on her fondness for chocolate and Abe Lincoln. She is working on her third novel while her fab agent pitches the first two to publishers.

This past March, a man climbed an enormous sequoia tree in downtown Seattle. Refusing to come down, he threw branches, pine cones, an apple and other debris onto the police below. He stayed there for more than twenty-four hours, and by the time he descended, he had stripped many branches from the upper half of the tree. The damage to the sequoia was assessed at $7800, not including the cost of the time and resources used by the Seattle Police and Fire Departments.

The next day, I heard someone on the radio refer to this man as “the whackjob in the tree.”

Such casual use of this word, “whackjob,” delivered the one-two punch to my gut and to my heart. As someone with a diagnosis of Bipolar 2 (Bipolar Disorder being the condition formerly known as Manic Depression), I think quite a lot about how the language we use to describe those with a mental health condition allows us to ignore the hurt, marginalization, helplessness and hopelessness felt by those who struggle. Oh, the power of words. [Read more…]

A few months back, I woke in the middle of the night with an epiphany: My protagonist is a cartographer! I have always loved staring at maps: imagining the poor dears who live in Boring, OR. The taut-tushed inhabitants of Superior Bottom, WV. The inquisitive folks of Why, AZ. And I love maps because cartographers are visual […]

Until last week, I was reading three books at once, all of which included a whole lot of human suffering. Book #1: the Bible, specifically the Book of Job, a book that reminds me that at any moment, God could takest everyone and everything away and give me skin ulcers. I wouldn’t be reading it […]

After the recent death of Gene Wilder, I heard several moving tributes and interviews from the early 2000s. But it was Wilder’s words about his childhood that struck me: after his mother had a heart attack, the heart specialist took eight-year-old Wilder gently by the arm and said, “Don’t ever get angry with your mother. […]

This past June, I got a tattoo: three ginkgo leaves that span nearly the length of my inner forearm. The leaves dance in an invisible breeze, and I love it. My mother-in-law believes it’s a temporary tattoo, one that will rub off with summer swims in Seattle-area waters of body—lakes, canals, chlorinated pools, Puget Sound. But no, […]

When we last left our heroes (i.e. all of you at WU) we were discussing writer’s block, whether it is real, whether it’s just an excuse, whether it’s caused by fear or sloth or perhaps an ill-crafted story. Today, fearless ones, we are going to explore the two roads we might take when writer’s block […]

Every Friday I and a few others meet with our pastor to help him brainstorm ideas and applications for his Sunday sermons. He shares the verses that will anchor the sermon; we offer ideas about our interpretation of the passage and brainstorm ways he might make these verses relevant to congregants. This pastor is so smart and […]

Over spring break, we cashed in my husband’s frequent flier miles and Marriott points and took the kids to Washington D.C. where museums are free and drivers honk their horns 100% more often than Seattleites do. I don’t think car manufacturers even install horns in the cars of Seattle drivers. A highlight of D.C. was […]

Today, friends, without charging you a co-pay or forcing you to read your HIPA rights, I am going to share with you the single most important words my mechanic (AKA my therapist) ever said to me. First though, some context. Around the time of this pivotal tune-up session (circa 2008), I had two tiny children, […]

In the late 1990s, I wrote a short story—my first ever—and submitted it to The New Yorker. It was a really amazing piece of fiction, one that reflected dozens of minutes of toil and revision. I do not remember the plot (which suggests there was none) except for one detail: the female character sits on a therapist’s couch, […]

My grandmother was born on an east Texas watermelon farm in 1922. At age 17, after she graduated from Beaumont High School, she left for Hollywood and danced in films alongside Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, hobnobbed with Humphrey Bogart. After she met my grandfather, she left Hollywood and gave birth to four beautiful children, […]